Moving electronic data from one point to another in a computer network is ubiquitous. As data is moved, it often needs to be converted from one format to another. For instance, business partners may send EDI data to each other, and the back-end systems which receive and process the data use other data formats, necessitating that the data be transformed from the EDI format into XML, a COBOL Copybook, or some other format.
Multiple technologies such as XSLT and Java programs exist for performing data conversion. When a company needs or decides to change the data conversion technology, typically, the data conversion itself needs to be re-implemented. That is, the data formats for the input and output, and the mapping between the two, typically needs to be re-created and tested. This is often a time-consuming and expensive task.
Accordingly, there is a continuing need for improved transformation technologies.